The Daily Show: Ears Edition - ICYMI - Lori Lightfoot on Tackling the Coronavirus in Chicago and Spreading Hope with Humor

Episode Date: April 18, 2020

Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot discusses the steps her administration is taking to battle COVID-19 and its disproportionate impact on the city's communities of color. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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You have quickly become one of the busiest mayors in America in an unfortunate time because coronavirus has really had a deep impact on Chicago. The coronavirus as we've seen is having a disproportionate impact on communities of color. African-Americans are dying at higher rates. I think 70% of the people who have died in your area are black whereas only 29% of the population is black. What have you been looking at and why do you think it's so important to look at this through the prism of race?

Well, one, we have to understand the full magnitude of the impact on this virus in our city. So as we started to see these numbers, we took a couple of steps. Number one, we mandated that all providers who were doing about a quarter of the providers telling us that they were teasting, telling us to test results, but not including the race and that ethnicity of information, which we knew was critically important. The other thing that we've done is made sure that we are reaching out to these communities.

We're looking at the areas where there's a highest concentration of deaths, highest concentration of infections, and we formed a racial equity rapid response team right away. That is taking a model of kind of community-based medicine that has been effective in a particular area of the city and then expanding that model to include public health folks, people on the ground in neighborhoods, everything from the pastors to the block clubs. We've got street intervention workers who normally are working on stopping violence. We've now enlisted them in this effort. And really trying to be as hyper local as we can. We know that while we're a city of neighborhoods, each of them is unique in its own ways.

And they have their strengths and their challenges. So we've been learning even more about the nuances of neighborhoods, particularly when you're talking about black and brown neighborhoods and so what supports they need to be able to bring people into the health care system, educated about the virus, and bringing people help is what we really been about. You've been about that in more ways than most leaders have because you started actually driving around, telling people, literally telling people to get back into their houses, to go back home when people weren't taking it seriously.

This was on-the-ground mayoral work. And some of the PSAs that you started releasing were some of the funniest that I didn't think were real until I realized they actually came from you. One of my favorites was telling all all the kids the kids the kids, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I thi, I thi, I'm, I'm, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to to to to to to to to to, to to th, th, th, th, th. th. th. th. thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi.eeei. told, theean, thei. thean, thean, thi, thi, thi, thi One of my favorites was telling all the kids who are still going out to play basketball, your jump shot is not gonna improve, stay home. Why did you feel it was so important to get involved personally? And why did you use humor to try and get your message across as well? Well, I mean, humor is kind of the unifying thing, right?

And in this really dark time, we found that, and really this came up organically from other people. There's a bunch of memes that started once I closed the lake front down, and just building upon people's desire for content. You know, this is a time when we would be heavily involved in sports and music and all of that has been taken from us by really trying to curve the spread of this virus. So giving people hope and using humor, it's a great way to kind of break through the noise

and reach people. That's what I just think it's important for the mayor, not just be seen behind a TV screen, but to be out in community safely, of course, but to be present. One of the policies you've implemented in Chicago truly stood out for me. And it was highlighted by an issue that I think a lot of people overlooked during this time. And that is people who are trapped indoors or in houses or in any type of abode with family members who may be abusive, specifically women.

We've seen domestic abuse rates skyrockets all over the world. And you've launched an interesting initiative, you know, lift and an and an and an and an and an and an and an and an and an and their and their and their and their and their and their their their their their their their their their their skyrockets all over the world. And you've launched an interesting initiative, you know, Lyft and Uber are helping in this. What are you doing and why did you feel that you had to do it in the way that you did? Well, look, we know that domestic violence is a problem in the best of times, and we were concerned about seeing an uptick. So what we did in combination with Uber and Lyft was train the hotline workers where people are calling

because they want to get out of a dangerous or troubling family circumstance to give them a special code that they can use to order a lift or an Uber to take them anywhere to safety. It's a very simple and straightforward thing, but we thought that that was really important. We didn't want the absence of a ride to be a reason why somebody felt compelled to stay in a dangerous domestic situation.

I commend you for that. Thank you so much for joining us on the show, and I genuinely hope that you get to help all of the people that you've been trying to. Thank you so much I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you very much Mayor Lightfoot. Thank you. The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Ears Edition. Watch the Daily Show weeknights at 11th 10 Central on Comedy Central and the Comedy Central and watch full episodes and videosto the Daily Show on YouTube for exclusive content and more.

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